When I was first building my credit I did a bunch of research and found a credit union that would let me take out a 12 month secured loan and then used the proceeds from the loan to open a secured credit card. I immediately paid off all but one payment on the loan pushing out my due date to the 12th month and scheduled an autopay for the final payment (this way I only had to pay a trivial amount of interest). This particular credit union has their secured cards "graduate" to unsecured cards after 1 year of on-time payments. Right before the card "graduated" I dumped all the savings I had into the card. They returned my security when the card "graduated" and I was left with a 12 month on time installment history and a significant unsecured credit line. After that I didn't have any problems getting approved for other cards with limits sometimes even eclipsing my annual income. I figured all this out just by reading web forums.